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Asked: 2026-06-11T19:06:17+00:00

How do i read the all the text within in the <context>…</context> tag? And

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How do i read the all the text within in the <context>...</context> tag? And how about the <head>...<\head> tag within the <context \> tag?

I’ve an XML file that looks like this:

<corpus lang="english">
    <lexelt item="coach.n">
        <instance id="1">
            <context>I'll buy a train or <head>coach</head> ticket.</context>
        </instance>
        <instance id="2">
            <context>A branch line train took us to Aubagne where a <head>coach</head> picked us up for the journey up to the camp.</context>
        </instance>
    </lexelt>
</corpus>

But when i ran my code to read the XML text within the …, I’m only getting the text until i reach the tag. 

import xml.etree.ElementTree as et    
inputfile = "./coach.data"    
root = et.parse(open(inputfile)).getroot()
instances = []

for corpus in root:
    for lexelt in corpus:
      for instance in lexelt:
        instances.append(instance.text)

j=1
for i in instances:
    print "instance " + j
    print "left: " + i
    print "\n"  
    j+=1

Now I’m just getting the left side:

instance 1
left: I'll buy a train or 

instance 2
left: A branch line train took us to Aubagne where a

The output needs also the right side of the context and the head, it should be:

instance 1
left: I'll buy a train or 
head: coach
right:   ticket.

instance 2
left: A branch line train took us to Aubagne where a 
head: coach
right:  picked us up for the journey up to the camp.
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    First of all, you have a mistake in your code. for corpus in root is not necessary, your root is already corpus.

    What you probably meant to do was:

    for lexelt in root:
  for instance in lexelt:
    for context in instance:
      contexts.append(context.text)

    Now, regarding your question – inside the for context in instance block, you can access the other two strings you need:

    1. The head text can be accessed by accessing context.find('head').text
    2. The text in the right of your head element can be read by accessing context.find('head').tail
      According to the Python etree docs:

    The tail attribute can be used to hold additional data associated with
    the element. This attribute is usually a string but may be any
    application-specific object. If the element is created from an XML
    file the attribute will contain any text found after the element’s end
    tag and before the next tag.

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